LONDON – LONDON (AP) — Sadiq Khan, the Labor Party’s mayor of London, cruised to victory on Saturday, securing a record third consecutive term at City Hall, in another hugely disappointing day for Britain’s ruling Conservatives ahead of the upcoming general election. they approach.
Khan won just over a million votes, or almost 44% of the vote, more than 11 percentage points ahead of his main opponent, Susan Hall of the Conservative Party. His is the biggest single mandate of any politician in the UK
There was frantic speculation on Friday that the result would be closer than previously thought, but Khan’s victory showed a shift from Conservative to Labor when compared with the previous mayoral election in 2021, although this was conducted under a different electoral system.
Khan, who replaced Boris Johnson as London Mayor in 2016 and who has sweeping police and budgetary powers, has been an increasingly divisive figure in recent years, regardless of the facts for or against, especially in the suburbs, where he has fared well. worse than in the city center.
His supporters say he has multiple achievements to his name, such as expanding house building, free school meals for young children, keeping transport costs under control and general support for London’s minority groups. His critics say he oversaw a rise in crime, was anti-car and needlessly allowed pro-Palestine marches to become a regular weekend occurrence.
“We faced a campaign of non-stop negativity, but I could not be prouder that we responded to fear-mongering with facts, hate with hope, and attempts to divide with efforts to unite,” Khan said in the final outcome statement. . Among the candidates behind him was Count Binface, his head covered by a rubbish bin, a colorful regular presence in British elections.
“We ran a campaign that was in keeping with the spirit and values of this great city, a city that considers our diversity not as a weakness but as an all-powerful strength, and that rejects far-right right-wing populism and looks forward, not back,” Khan added.
The current Labor mayors of Liverpool, Greater Manchester and West Yorkshire were also re-elected on Saturday. For the Labor Party, arguably the best result was in the West Midlands, widely regarded as the UK’s key region, where the Conservative incumbent lost.
The Labor Party’s latest successes came after it took control of councils across England, something it had not held for decades. The party was also successful in a special election for a seat in Parliament, which if translated into a general election would lead to one of the biggest defeats ever for the Conservatives.
Although the Conservatives suffered a defeat in the local elections, it appears that Prime Minister Rishi Sunak will no longer face a rebellion within his ranks.
Sunak could breathe a sigh of relief when the Conservative mayor of Tees Valley in northeast England was re-elected, albeit with a depressed vote share. Sunak had hoped Andy Street would retain the West Midlands, but lost to Labour’s Richard Parker, who won a majority of less than 2,000 votes.
One negative for the Labor Party was that its vote in heavily Muslim areas in England was depressed by opposition to the party leadership’s strongly pro-Israel stance on the war in Gaza.
Starmer admitted the party had problems with Muslim voters, but the results were generally positive for the man who is the favorite to become prime minister at the next general election.
Sunak has the power to decide the date of the next election and has indicated it will be in the second half of 2024. Starmer urged him not to wait.
“We are fed up with your division, your chaos, your failure,” he said Saturday. “If you leave your country in worse shape than when you found it 14 years later, you don’t deserve to be in government another minute.”
Thursday’s elections across much of England were important in their own right, with voters deciding who runs many aspects of their daily lives, such as garbage collection, road maintenance and local crime prevention. But with national elections approaching, they are being viewed through a national prism.
John Curtice, professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde, said the results showed Sunak had not helped the Conservative brand following the damage accumulated by the actions of his predecessors, Boris Johnson and then Liz Truss.
“In a sense that is the big conclusion,” he told BBC radio.
Sunak became Prime Minister in October 2022, following Truss’s short tenure. She left office after 49 days, following a budget of unfunded tax cuts that roiled financial markets and sent borrowing costs for homeowners soaring.
His chaotic – and traumatic – leadership has compounded the Conservatives’ difficulties following the circus surrounding his predecessor Johnson, who was forced to resign after being tried for lying to Parliament about breaches of the coronavirus lockdown in his Downing Street offices.
By late Saturday afternoon, with most of the 2,661 seats up for grabs in local elections counted, the Conservatives had lost around half of the 1,000 seats they were defending, while Labor had won around 200, despite some apparently Gaza-related losses. .
Other parties, such as the centrist Liberal Democrats and the Greens, also made gains. Reform UK, which is trying to usurp the right-wing Tories, has also had some successes, notably in the special parliamentary election in Blackpool South, where it was less than 200 votes short of winning second place.
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